


Close Your Eyes. Take a Deep Breath. (Then You Can Scream Your Lungs Out)

by LoyalTheorist



Series: Bubbles [1]
Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Bubble Overload AU, Dipper Pines Needs A Hug, Ford Pines Needs a Hug, Ford is Scared, Gen, Mabel Pines is Giving Out Hugs, Stan Pines Needs A Hug, Why do we do this to the characters whom we love?, mild body horror
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-30
Updated: 2018-06-30
Packaged: 2019-05-31 03:54:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15111257
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LoyalTheorist/pseuds/LoyalTheorist
Summary: Ford Pines is almost certain that he hasn't always had this many limbs.Stan Pines is almost certain that he wasn't ever the golden child.Dipper Pines is almost certain that when he went to bed last night, he didn't have a tail.Mabel Pines is surprised. She didn't expect her family to be physically affected by her redesigning of the universe.But she'll gladly help them adjust.





	Close Your Eyes. Take a Deep Breath. (Then You Can Scream Your Lungs Out)

 

It had been almost a decade since Stanford Pines had woken up to find the structure of his body to be different than it had been when he had fallen asleep.

Even so, nightmares about such a thing happening were almost as common as nightmares about his triangular adversary. A sudden shift in the makeup of your being was not something easily forgotten. It had happened to Ford twice before. Once, in the Yo-Yo dimension, he had, without any warning, been at least a month younger, as evidenced by the sudden disappearance of a new wound and the sudden reappearance of an old one. While inconvenient, it had not been particularly dangerous (he wasn't ever going to admit that this had happened to his brother, as Stanley would surely insist that he was the better twin, and that had always been annoying).

The second time it had happened had been terrifying. He'd hardly slept for almost a week, he had run out of things to keep him awake, and his sleep deprived brain wouldn't have been able to tell left from right, let alone pick up on the subtle clues he would usually look for to tell if a place was safe or not. So he'd fallen asleep slumped against a building in dimension 974.6, too exhausted to notice the Phillanthian sneaking up on him. He had woken up well-rested, but also in a body that wasn't his, with its oversized ears and ridiculously long fingernails. Eventually, he'd regained his "worthless defective pile of meat" but all he'd been able to think about for months is how strange that had felt, and how he might not have gotten his body back, and how much that  _scared him._

That was nothing compared to this, because the Phillanthian had been about as close to human as multiverse creatures got, and now he had four arms.

Almost a decade was now reduced to zero time at all - not that he could tell if time was truly passing. Maybe it was frozen. Maybe Bill wasn't contained, the way he had feared. Maybe Ford himself was dead.

Silently, tears fell from his eyes, and it took him a moment of cold numbness to realize that he was producing twice the tears usual for any healthy human being. Did he - yes, he had four eyes, the exact same way he now possessed four arms.

A low whimper escaped his mouth unbidden. This wasn't happening, this wasn't happening, this couldn't be happening.

It almost hurt, because it felt so natural. It was as though he had been using four arms all his life, as though this was a perfectly normal thing. Half his brain told him that he was crying over nothing, and the other half screamed at him because this was  _wrong._ This was just  _so wrong._

After what somehow felt like forever and no time at all, he gingerly raised one of his extra limbs. And held it in front of his face. Indeed, they were his arms, though the way they lacked the ridiculous number of scars his other two had was, while not nearly as terrifying as the fact that  _this was extra skin and bone attached to his body,_ almost disturbing. They protruded from his back, almost directly behind the original ones. Six fingers, middle two the same lengths, long and nimble.

He closed his hand, and he could feel it, both the pressure in his fingers and the pressure in his palms, and  _why, why why, why, why, why did things like this always always always always always have to happen to him?_

Another whimper wrestled its way through his lips.

He broke.

He closed his original two eyes (and it scared him that the only reason he knew those were his original eyes was their placement in his head) and let his two original arms drop.

Then, in the same timid way a young child moves when they've been asked to speak to an adult whom they don't like, Ford pushed himself to his feet with his two new appendages.

If asked, Ford Pines would admit that waking up prior to anyone else gave him a sense of pride and accomplishment, no matter how ridiculous that may have seemed to an outsider. That was why when Ford walked to the other side of the room and focused his attention on the wall clock above the doorway (it took some effort, given that part of his conscious mind was rejecting the idea of having his eyes closed and still being able to see) he was not surprised to find that it was only 6:04 AM.

Dipper & Mabel would be waking up soon. Mabel because she was a morning person, and Dipper because Mabel would almost definitely wake her brother up. Then again, reshaping the entire universe was, not unexpectedly, taking its toll on his young relative. Last night, her response to Dipper's prod to "Eat your dinner." had been "Shut up, I'm doing this for your own good."

Ford opened the door of his room slowly, carefully, and before he walked out he couldn't help but notice the way his head almost hit the doorframe. He paused and studied his surroundings.

Oh, yes, he was definitely taller.

He felt like an intruder in his own home. He wondered how Dipper and Mabel react to seeing him. Curiousity? Sympathy? Fear?

He hoped, more than anything else, that the small twins would not respond to appearence with fear. He was, after all, still very much himself. Or at least he hoped so. He supposed he would have to go over his behaviour later to see if it was indeed the way he normally acted.

6:30 struck, and he could hear Mabel's alarm clock go off, cheery but obnoxiously loud tunes carrying down the stairs. Then there were the squeals of a child, high but close to perpetually delightful. A squeaking of mattress springs suggested Ford's grandneice was jumping on either her or Dipper's bed, and based on the quickly following "Hey!" that was also high, it could be assumed that Dipper was awake.

He could hear Mabel's padded feet as she tore down the staircase.

Ford, who had moved into the kitchen, sat down. His legs had begun to feel like jell-o. He could see his hands shaking, and he considered returning to his room.

Mabel turned the corner and stopped dead in her tracks. She stared at Ford, wide-eyed.

Oh, how Ford wished he had gone back to his room.

Quietly, Mabel walked over to him.

"Are you okay?" She asked.

"I- I'm not dying. That's for sure."

He had to force his mouth to form the words. His throat was closing. He squeezed his eyes tightly closed. There would be no crying in front of Mabel.

"Ima hug you, m'kay?"

Ford nodded. He felt Mabel's arms wrap around him. He wasn't completely sure why this was so comforting, but he would take it.

"Do you know why this happened?" Mabel asked when she finally untangled herself from her great-uncle.

Ford shook his head, and Mabel sat down next to him to think a moment.

Dipper slept in his shoes. That was why it was so easy to tell who clunked down the stairwell. Like Mabel, as he turned into the kitchen he stopped. He looked tired, like he almost always looked, but he was not nearly tired enough not to notice the way he was using four arms to prop his head up, or the four sets of eyelashes.

"Are you okay?"

Dipper's question was the same as Mabel's.

"I'm not dead. It just feels very...weird."

"Good weird or bad weird?" Mabel asked, turning to him.

"Bad weird. It might be residual weirdness from Weirdmageddon."

"Wait," Dipper said, then he paused a moment thinking. "What if it isn't from Weirdmageddon? What if its from Mabel?"

"I wouldn't do this to Great-Uncle Ford!" Shrieked Mabel indignantly.

"Not on purpose, but what if this is just going to start happening to all humans? As a result of all the stuff you're doing?"

"Oh. Well, yeah, I guess that kinda makes sense." Mabel blushed.

"Have I ever told you how brilliant you are?" Asked Ford.

"Well, yes, but I wouldn't mind hearing it again."

"You, my boy, are brilliant."

"We should put you in the Shack and advertize you as 'the brilliant guy'."

"Ah, yes, definitely. 'Come see the brilliant guy, he's very helpful'."

Mabel turned to Ford.

"Are you going to be okay?"

Ford paused and contemplated this.

"Probably. It will take a lot of getting used to, of course, but I think, when it's all over, I'll be fine."

He was.


End file.
